Semiconductor device geometries have dramatically decreased in size since their introduction several decades ago. Modern semiconductor fabrication equipment routinely produces devices with 32 nm, 28 nm and 22 nm feature sizes, and new equipment is being developed and implemented to make devices with even smaller geometries. The decreasing feature sizes result in structural features on the device having decreased spatial dimensions. The widths of gaps and trenches on the device narrow to a point where the aspect ratio of gap depth to its width becomes high enough to make it challenging to fill the gap with dielectric material. The depositing dielectric material is prone to clog at the top before the gap completely fills, producing a void or seam in the middle of the gap.
Over the years, many techniques have been developed to avoid having dielectric material clog the top of a gap, or to “heal” the void or seam that has been formed. One approach has been to start with highly flowable precursor materials that may be applied in a liquid phase to a spinning substrate surface (e.g., SOG deposition techniques). These flowable precursors can flow into and fill very small substrate gaps without forming voids or weak seams. However, once these highly flowable materials are deposited, they have to be hardened into a solid dielectric material. Shrinkage is reduced by using carbon-free flowable films containing nitrogen (e.g. SOD deposition techniques). The nitrogen can be replaced with oxygen during a post-deposition treatment to form gapfill silicon oxide.
Further improvements to the gapfill silicon oxide are achieved by remotely exciting one precursor in a remote plasma region and combining the plasma effluents with an unexcited silicon precursor near a deposition substrate. The deposition rate of the gapfill silicon oxide achieves steady state after a number of wafers are run. More cost-effective methods are desired to bring the deposition rate of the gapfill silicon oxide to its steady state value.
Thus, there is a need for system treatments which reduce the cost of consumables and/or accelerate the arrival of steady state deposition rates for radical-component films.